Somali Youth Unemployed as Foreigners Fill Jobs: A Growing National Concern

Somalia’s Jobless Youth and the Expat Premium: What Happens When a Country Outsources Its Future?

MOGADISHU — On a hot morning near Kilometre 4, the capital’s arteries of traffic pulse around concrete blast walls and coffee stalls. At a curbside kiosk, a queue of young men and women refresh their phones, swapping links to job ads that feel always just out of reach. Many are college graduates; most live with family; almost all say the same thing: the opportunities are elsewhere.

Somalia is far from the only place where a “youth bulge” collides with a thin job market. But the stakes here are acute. Aid agencies and contractors form a parallel economy; security demands narrow the field; and foreign expertise often comes packaged with foreign payrolls. The result is a paradox that echoes across other fragile states: in a country where youth unemployment is among the highest in the world, some of the best-paid jobs are held by non-citizens.

A youthful nation with few ladders upward

The United Nations estimates that roughly seven in ten Somalis are under 30. International surveys vary on exact figures, but economists and aid groups broadly agree: youth unemployment runs above 50% in many communities. That figure doesn’t fully capture the insecurity of day-to-day life—the gig economy of boda-boda rides, seasonal casual work, and the long shadow of conflict that skews the labor market.

For a generation raised on WhatsApp and remittance lifelines, the cognitive dissonance is stark. Somalia hosts dozens of international agencies and development projects. Office towers glow at night. Yet entry-level jobs in those compounds often require years of experience, multiple languages, and security clearances—barriers that tilt the hiring game toward expatriates or a narrow slice of the diaspora.

In a widely shared local commentary, one young Somali wrote, “Inta aan Soomaaliya joogi lahaa, badda ayaan ku dhimanayaa”—better to risk the sea than remain at home without work. There is harsh poetry in that despair. It’s also a ledger of lost human capital, paid in funeral notices from the Mediterranean.

The expat premium meets local law

Somalia’s Labour Code—Law No. 65 of 1972—was written in another era, but its intent is unambiguous. It bars discrimination based on nationality, prioritizes qualified Somali workers when available, and restricts hiring foreign workers for roles that citizens can perform. In practice, enforcement is fragile. Ministries overseeing labor, planning and foreign affairs face the same constraints as the broader state: underfunded inspectorates, limited data, and a political class trying to balance sovereignty with badly needed outside help.

That tension is familiar to anyone who has reported in Kabul, Juba or Port-au-Prince. When a project’s donor clock is ticking, contractors often default to the quickest “safe pair of hands.” Risk managers lean toward known expatriate networks; insurers price policies accordingly; and the “expat premium”—salaries that can climb into five figures a month—becomes the cost of doing business. Procurement, too, gravitates toward foreign firms that bring compliance track records and armies of auditors.

None of this is a moral failure on its face, and many foreign staff do crucial work. But the accumulation effect is corrosive: a labor market that sidelines national graduates, budgets that leak value abroad, and social media feeds that turn cynicism into an organizing principle.

Silence at the top, frustration below

Somali officials know the optics. Some push quietly for localization, and there are projects that train and transition roles to national staff. Yet the political incentive to publicly challenge international partners is low. Officials fear jeopardizing funds or projects that keep clinics running and payrolls afloat. The result is a studied silence—and a widening trust gap with young citizens who hear promises of “jobs for the youth” while watching SUVs roll into compounds they can’t enter.

This is not simply about pride or optics. It is about macroeconomics and migration. When high-value salaries are remitted abroad and procurement bypasses local firms, Somalia forfeits multiplier effects that could seed industries. When qualified national candidates are undercut by blanket “security” rationales, brain drain accelerates—first to Nairobi and Addis, then to Dubai and Europe.

The global pattern—and a way through

Somalia’s dilemma mirrors a larger story in fragile and post-conflict states. Across Afghanistan, South Sudan and the Sahel, well-intended aid has sometimes created an enclave economy. The best remedy is not to slam the door on foreign expertise—it’s to design systems that translate external resources into domestic capacity, with the discipline to measure progress.

What would that look like in Mogadishu and beyond?

• Enforce the law, transparently: Require all foreign employers to publish annual workforce data—shares of national vs. expatriate staff, salary bands, and plans to localize roles. Tie project renewals to credible localization milestones.
• Skill transfer with teeth: Make “shadowing-to-ownership” a contractual clause—every expatriate technical role paired with a Somali counterpart with a dated handover plan.
• National graduate pipelines: Create sector-wide internship and apprenticeship quotas funded by donors but managed by Somali universities and technical institutes, with competitive stipends to keep talent in-country.
• Local procurement first: Set clear thresholds for sourcing from Somali businesses, vetted for quality but not excluded by paperwork designed for multinationals.
• Diaspora as bridge, not bypass: Incentivize short, high-impact diaspora tours—sprints of 3–6 months—to train teams and build systems, rather than permanent displacements of national staff.

These ideas aren’t theoretical. Variations exist in Rwanda’s localization policies, Liberia’s post-Ebola health staffing, and the UN’s growing—if uneven—commitments to national staff development. The hard part is discipline: paying attention to the metrics long after the ribbon-cutting photos fade.

A question to donors and to Mogadishu

To international partners: If the goal is a stable Somalia, how does your hiring and procurement today build the workforce that will run the systems tomorrow? Counting training sessions isn’t enough; what matters is who sits in the chair in five years.

To Somali leaders: Is it sustainable to trade political quiet for a generation’s disillusionment? The law is there. The public is watching. Enforcing fair hiring and publishing the numbers would send a message that the state is not a spectator to its own labor market.

Somalis have a proverb: “Nin aan shaqayn shilin ma helo”—he who doesn’t work earns no coin. The inverse is also true: when work is denied to those ready to do it, a nation pays dearly. The young people refreshing their phones in Mogadishu do not lack ambition. They lack ladders. Building those ladders—through law, policy and a new compact with donors—is the difference between a country that exports its future and one that keeps it home.

A better equilibrium is possible. The question now is whether Somalia’s partners, and its own government, are ready to move from words to wages.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.